My Hero--Love Overcame My Fear of Bullies! Paula G

by PSG
(USA NC state)

I'm sure so many of you have probably experienced believing you were ugly and poor. I believe others can sense it and cruelly feed upon it. From grade school until high school, I was the victim of severe bullying. I know so many of you have suffered from this as well. Age doesn’t matter. Keep yourself safe and speak loud and obnoxious and free against your predators! I so wish someone had told me this. Before you are an adult, if you do this with words and sometimes maybe a good punch—you’re life WILL change.
I was called names, made fun; dreaded going to school. My best friends betrayed me. My family thought I had mental problems. The counselors disagreed. They concluded I was a lovely young lady dealing with bullies.
I was in my junior in high-school. I was very vulnerable at this point in my life. A “girl friend” just decided to “ruin me”! She turned the “others” against me. When I’d walk down the hall,—they would stop and laugh at me and keep repeating: “It’s a-coming; It’s a coming over and over again. I wanted to die. If you don’t know how it felt, you may have been a bully yourself.
I met my now-husband in the 10th grade. I was afraid to look at him in the light. I was so afraid he would think I was ugly. He thought he did something to offend me. I couldn’t tell him how frightened and ugly I felt; how petrified I was that one of the bullies would “steal him away” as my past experiences had proven. He lifted up my head and said: “I love you and you are beautiful, inside and out.
We have now been married 40 years. I now look back at my pictures; I WAS beautiful! I taught my daughter to defend herself again bullies and to BE HER OWN BEST FRIEND—never take for granted who cares for you.
I am not the smartest or richest person in the world. But I AM LOVED! I DON'T CARE what others think because I know, and God knows, what a wonderful person I am. He gave me my husband 40 years ago as a gift!
Please, all of you, be good parents; teach your children not to be bullies! Everyone deserves respect. I survived and YOU CAN TOO. Don’t ignore it—stick up for yourself as fiercely as you can! You will find your “hero” as well.